


And Now The Wasteland

by TaeAelin



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Abstract, F/M, Fever, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Illnesses, Injury, Inspired by Mad Max Series (Movies), Post-Mad Max: Fury Road, Scars, Sickfic, Slit Lives, Surreal, Survival, Valhalla, War Boys Showing Affection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-18
Updated: 2015-08-18
Packaged: 2018-04-15 09:31:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4601715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TaeAelin/pseuds/TaeAelin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the weeks following the revolution, a feverish, wounded Slit begins to come to terms with his rescue and return to The Citadel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And Now The Wasteland

**Author's Note:**

> All credit for the opening verse to T.S.Elliot - extract from The Wasteland, 1922.

_What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow_

_Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,_

_You cannot say, or guess, for you know only_

_A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,_

_And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,_

_And the dry stone no sound of water. Only_

_There is shadow under this red rock,_

_(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),_

_And I will show you something different from either_

_Your shadow at morning striding behind you_

_Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;_

_I will show you fear in a handful of dust._

He sometimes heard her mumble it. Sometimes she traced it into the sand. Slit couldn’t make meaning of that version as much. But once, after she’d kicked it out, a corner of the words had remained. He had stared at the patterns, strange and straight and spiralling. He knew where the shapes connected and where they didn't, and that the links made it all work somehow. Not like something real, something that moved, but in a secret way, like all the things in the time before.

He once heard The Wretched say that Imperator Furiosa _was_ from the time before. But The Wretched said a lot of things, a lot of noise. But he used to glance at her, every so often, before the war. Just in case.

It had been hot in the days after. Hot and painful, the pain without hope of glory, the kind that sputtered and fizzled out in the agony of doing nothing, of lying still. Someone had ordered his wrist strapped to the pull-bar after his first attempt to re-join the workshop, then later both, after he had near bled out trying to cut the chain. In the end, it was only realising that he was getting close that forced him into calm, or the gates would have closed to him forever. From there the pain thickened, and it was after that he started thinking he saw her again.

In the delusion, she would come to where he was, to oversee. And in the best and most stumbling of deliriums, she would pass by alone, and say more of her words. That was how he wished he learnt the secret. But really he knew he was just remembering it, she must have said it some other time. There had been too much time before the war.

The beforedays had dribbled, but he still remembered the flood of water, spinning down like the wings of a metallic angel, crashing headfirst into the earth. He had ploughed through the puddle of scrambling adults, kicking ankles and jabbing aside the weakened limbs, until he was there, at the front, his mouth pressed to the silver liquid and drinking, drinking until the sand was sticking to his lips and tongue and Immortan Joe stood above, arms upstretched and a perfect mirror of the angel. He told that story later, and the people said the water wasn’t made of metal at all, it just tasted like that because the sand was heavy with spilled gasoline. But he knew what he saw. And it didn’t matter what the people said, because that was the last night he needed to say their names, and after he was white and black and new and saved.

She was there a day before he was ready to stand, a day after he had done so anyway. It had been a sickening, crunching feeling, like getting gouged out all over again. He didn’t remember coming down, but had woken with both knees bloodied and screaming. He was glad, and he would have done it again if she hadn’t been there to stop him. His arm coiled over her shoulders, instead he let her drag him into the glaring sunlight. He pretended he wasn’t curious. He was wanted for _questioning_ , they said. If anything The Wretched ever said was worth hearing.

By the time she set him behind the outcrop, he had begun to doubt there would be much talking at all, let alone questions. It set him shaking, seeing it from the other side, that gaping platform where Immortan Joe had stood. He nearly couldn’t look. It was hard enough to breathe as it was. A mouth to the sky, bit straight out of the rock.

She stared out, mostly at the other towers, only a little stare every few minutes for him. She didn’t like Tower Three. He could tell, because her mouth set a little harder every time she fixed on that one. But he understood. Nobody liked the muck of Tower Three, least of all anyone who started there. He hoped she wasn’t going to ask him what it had been like. But she didn’t. And then he almost hoped she did.

The ache in his ribs was bad. He could see the bruise better now, though the light was fast fading to blood. Purple and green and yellow, it exploded across his chest like three colour flares at once. It fascinated him, though it didn’t feel as beautiful when he tried to move. He made no expression to show it, though he soon needed to cough, which sounded as agonising as it was, whether he wanted it to or not.

When the spots in his vision cleared, she was crouching beside him with one of those bent billycan flasks. The kind in the workshop. He didn’t want to drink at first, but the Imperator had given it and so he realised he did want to, and would only stop when she took it away again. Then she stood, her palm outstretched. Gripping her wrist in return, she wrenched him to his feet. There was little gentleness in the hoist, and for that he was grateful. It was the first time he had known the feeling, and it was every bit as excruciating as he imagined.

 

-

 

A head taller than her, he was more familiar stretched out than crumpled in the corner, and though he swallowed a wince on standing to his full height, she knew he felt better for it. His body suffered- the hollows beneath his cheekbones had deepened; and beneath his broad shoulders, his collarbones jutted, smooth and sharp. The web of stitching over his ribs was swollen still. And then there were the burns. But the greatest danger had passed, and he had blazed through without infection somehow.

She had seen him without the paint the night she bathed him with a moistened rag, the night his fever nearly got away. When it hadn’t broken by the small hours, she had reapplied the dusty chalk herself, smearing harsh black grease below his eyes, wiping the rest on his forehead. Unconscious and unspoken for, he had battled the sweltering darkness, and she would not have let him ride into Valhalla disguised as any man.

But Slit had prevailed, and her doubt grew as distant as tracks in shifting sand. His mouth, cruel and defiant, remained set in a grimace as he finally met her eyes. He shone with something close to reverence. It was a familiar glaze, and not one she wanted to wear, but the War Boys knew little between allegiance and worship. Though she knew, if she pushed him, he would fall closer to the former. It was why she trusted him.

“Where does it come from, that name?”

It was an invitation, not a demand, and she let her words blur to a softness to show as much. He barely twitched, but it registered as surprise, it was not the question he had been expecting. When he answered, his voice was low too, sanded to harshness.

“We were working on The Gigahorse.”

He took a short breath, raising a hand to clutch the side of his ribcage before he could stop himself. He shook his head, eyes red-rimmed and watery within the sockets of coal.

“I was up top-back, loading the harpoons.”

She nodded. She guessed he had been young, though he didn’t say it. War Boys hardly ever realised they had been young.

“I was saying, one should be called Resurrection, the other Redemption. Then, tripped the release.” He made a gesture to indicate the spear discharging, his long fingers disturbingly graceful for all the dents and callouses.

“And-” he paused to make a vicious gouging motion across his jaw. “-Slit.”

So it was Immortan Joe’s vehicle. It figured. Seeing the elation with which he touched the staples holding his left cheek together, she wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d prised them from the seams of the shell himself. His smile fell slightly as he snatched the hand back down.

“Did the suggestions stick, at least?”

“For the guns?” he sneered, dredging up some bad blood, or spilled blood, or both. “Nah. Not my decision. But they were mostly just for show anyway.”

Edged with contempt, he shifted his weight, wary, then staggered, both palms pressed at his side. Striding forward, she secured an arm around his waist before he could fall. He flinched to wrench her off, but his hands stopped before they touched her skin. Caught between defiance and chaos, he fought instead to twist away from her as another fit of coughing wrestled with his lungs.

She moved her arm up higher, holding firm. Though it was impossible to tell under the husk of white, she imagined he looked a little paler. He was shivering more than she realised from looking at him.

“Alright. That’s enough standing for today.”

He made no argument as she lowered him to one of the benches, made habitable by the gauze of a disused hammock. He frowned.

“Not the lower levels?”

“I wouldn’t mind some company.”

She also wouldn’t mind if she could prevent him engaging in some fevered stunt before he was half-healed, but she kept that to herself. It would only be encouragement.

He sat, rigid and misshapen, the pooling eyes still watching her, waiting for some sign. Under his nose, a flicker of liquid showed where it had begun to run, though he seemed not to notice at all. Unwinding a rag from her pocket, she sat next to him, scrunching the coarse material across his upper lip. He sat still as if she were sewing a wound, teeth gritted as if it were just as painful. Then, with little warning, his eyes widened and he took an unruly gasp, jerking away from her and sneezing towards his lap.

A graze of wetness hazarded against her wrist, and she found herself easing into a grin as she saw his shock fuse with chagrin.

“I- I think I might have got you." 

“I think I can handle it.” Tucking the rag beside him, though she doubted he knew what to do with it, she clutched her hand to his shoulder before getting up. An afterthought, she added, “Take care.”

She turned her attention to the pipelines, only noticing he was still staring by the time she had finished inspecting the first of the meters. She made a small pencil scratching on the copper hull beside. He took a breath.

“Did you learn… in the time of writing?”

Writing. His rasp licked around the word.

“If I learned _in_ the time of writing” she answered, not unkindly. “I would be over 400 years old.”

She added the trace of a wink, to which, finally, he cracked a grin. Though, judging by the awe in it, he still seemed no less dissuaded from the idea. Kneeling in the dust, she wondered for how long he had wanted to ask.

“Are you happy to live again?”

It was a difficult question, and she knew it. The War Boys had a tenuous grasp on the notion of happiness at best, whilst the concept of living again was so entrenched that it would be hard for him to separate thought from mantra.

He took his time, closing his eyes. When he opened them, he had never looked so sincere. Nor so ruthless.

 

-

 

The flames sucked him dry. The wind pressed out of his lungs, glass swallowing his scalp as he thrust through the windscreen, acrid sand splintering the heels of his palms as he ploughed into the smouldering desert. He rolled onto his back in time to see the combustion, the plume and the gates. Resurrection. Redemption.

He was screaming, and his screams burned hotter than the shower of debris, the skewer in his side. He interwove his fingers, exhaust fading to a dirty shadow, and let himself believe this was all just one last test.

Trussed to a woven stretcher, he awoke to leathered faces and the stench of desperation. They were carrying him, homeless wanderers, probably in some hope of a token should he make it to The Citadel. Gas Town defectors? No, no masks. All the better for them. Nomads then. He clenched his teeth to a smile, arching his neck to see his ribs. The dried ravines through the caked chalk told him he had stopped sweating hours ago. Not long now. He howled with laughter, fierce and unstoppable. He could have arrived swerving in on the Razor Cola. Instead he’d be switching gears on a fucking basket transporter.

When at last they dragged in, he knew something had changed. There was a quiet buzzing in the air, and the hoards were leeching toward the shadow of Tower One, much like the hour of the metal flood. He threw himself against the flimsy holds, the cracked leather giving way easily. Immortan Joe had returned victorious, and the thought gave him strength beyond what was left in his parched veins.

The lead nomad realised what was happening a beat too late, his dried, slender hand on Slit’s shoulder no match for the war boy’s snarl. Careening forward, sunburnt and expired, Slit made for the pipes. This time, he didn’t need to push any of The Wretched aside, they saw him and they shrank. Running, he let out a yell, which sank into the distance, a trickle in a canyon. It was too quiet.

At last, he reached the front of the crowd, the spectacle rolling in, the faces blurred by muddy heat. There was a whirring from his lungs as he drew breath, and as he looked down, he saw most of his wounds were weeping fresh. And the body of god was everywhere, devoured before him in the hands of no one and everyone, till there was no god, and immortality seeped red into the sand, an oasis plundered to a mirage.

But above it all was the Imperator, standing high, high on the War Rig, yet almost within his reach. And her arms were raised, strong and triumphant, before the Mill Rats wound the platform down at her command. He had seen the elevator many times, but now he saw it for what it was, a gate opening behind her, dark and dangerous and glorious as ever he had been told. Standing on the threshold, ready to pull-up, she saw him, and he wept.

“I live. I die. I live again.”

She reached for him, and his vision spun vast and bright at once. The rest of his words did not matter. For after that, he was chrome. White and black and chrome and saved.

 

-

 

Thank you for reading! (: 

Comments and kudos are always welcome, or chat to me about War Boys on [Tumblr!](http://taeaelin.tumblr.com/)


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